Student Anxiety and Attitudes in Business Statistics

Abstract In the past, infant mortality rates in Jewish communities throughout the world were dramatically lower than those of their host populations. Nineteenth-century Venice was no exception: whereas the Catholic rates were about 25–30 percent, the Jewish rate was as low as 14 percent or even less. Several factors have been put forward to explain such differentials, including genetic makeup, religious prescriptions, personal hygiene, austere habits, community welfare institutions and social cohesion, higher cultural level, fertility control, prolonged breastfeeding, and the like. A comparison between a sample of the Jewish population and two parishes with similar social composition shows that, in the Venetian case at least, most of the factors cannot account for such a striking difference. Furthermore, both descriptive and hazard analyses clearly indicate that, although levels were dramatically different, infant mortality patterns were remarkably similar among Venetian Jews and Catholics, who had almost...